


for all things unlasting

by moonteeth



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Extended Scene, Gen, john deserved better 2k17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 07:00:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12625674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonteeth/pseuds/moonteeth
Summary: Merle was dreaming of a world where John could be whole.





	for all things unlasting

Backlit against the sunlight, John looked about as close to ascendant as he was ever likely to be. There was a slow, salty-sweet wind, tugging at the them. John's tie followed the breeze in a lazy line. So did the ends of his blazer. So did his hair.

It was strange, seeing John like this, socks off, feet in the sand, sleeves rolled to the shoulder, hair tousled with sand and salt. Merle had seen John rippling with darkness, broken and bent and _wrong_ \-- but never like this. He looked simple, real.

He looked _human_.

Just then, Merle allowed himself to imagine some other world, some other reality. And why shouldn't he? He'd seen countless worlds, worlds immemorial, realities that fought the limits of imagination-- who was to say there couldn't be a reality in which John survived?

And in this world, in the theater of an old dwarf's mind, John would look just like this, a little weathered, a little damp, but comfortable, kicking back in an old muskoka with a paperback thriller. Some real dad lit; Dan Brown, Stieg Larsson, Ted Bell. Merle would be there, too, taking his seat in the chair opposite. He'd be smoking something dark and rich, maybe fiddling with a tinny old radio, maybe watching Mookie and Mavis scamper across the beach. Merle's weathered old hands would be twisting the antennae, trying get the perfect reception on some cheesy country station. And he'd be _rambling_ , of course, low and friendly. He'd rant off about something, an old adventure, maybe, or on a dubiously floraphilic tangent. Maybe he'd be letting loose one of his prepared Panite filibusters. John would hum his amusement at that, not once lifting his eyes from his book.

He'd smile, too. A condescending smile, most likely. Merle's religiosity, after all, likely seemed quaintly provincial to John, who was so high-minded that even considerations of the divine seemed small in scale.

They'd share a beer out of the cooler, clink classes. Merle would slop his sip down his chin, soaking his beard through. And John would laugh; not the rough, dry laugh of a man in the process of temporarily remembering his own humanity, but-- something clear and bright. Whole.

Merle was dreaming of a world where John could be whole.

Merle... had never been one for regrets. Time heals all woulds, and Merle-- well. He'd had his fair share of time. If pressed, he could name only a handful. Catching that damned crystal in Lucas' laboratory, for one, even if the resulting handicap looked (by all accounts) fucking _bitchin'._ Then there was Mavis and Mookie; another regret, and one more deeply felt. But even then, there was still time, time enough to fix what he'd fumbled-- to be the father they deserved.

Now, there was John.

This-- this would be Merle's first and only truly inconsolable regret.

With John, that... that time simply wasn't there. And that. That was something worth regretting.

He hadn't saved John. He never would, never could. It had been too little and too late from the very beginning.

Perhaps-- perhaps if they'd met as younger men, as better men. There had been, after all, a time before the Hunger. A time where John was only a lonely, frightened man, poisoned by the seed of his own nihilism, his savage unhappiness, his cold desperation. Perhaps, if by some miracle Merle had found him then-- maybe, just maybe, he--

_No,_ Merle thought. John was a stubborn bastard, after all-- who the hell was Merle to talk him out of despair so fierce as to swallow reality? _But still. I would've tried._

He looked to the dying John, the crow's feet around his dark eyes, and something opened up in him. Only the latest wound in a growing count.

He would carry this grief for a long, long time.

“There was a moment,” John said, his smooth, quiet voice starting up and cutting clean through the silence. Merle blinked, eyes following the sound of John's voice. John was looking down at Merle, eyes locked. “A moment, back then-- where I saw, I _saw_ myself. I saw a great swath of darkness. A night that swallows the world. And I was everywhere, in all places; bearing down against this light--” John squeezed his eyes shut. He turned his head to the side, mouth curling into a tight unpleasant slash. “--Like an eclipse, swallowing down the sun. And I was _terrified_. I was terrified for you.”

Merle remembered what John had said, so many years ago. I _must be beautiful._

“In retrospect,” Merle said, “maybe I should've told you, you know, right off the bat. What you... looked like.”

_What you'd become._

“No,” John said. He opened his eyes again, taking in the fading light moving down beneath the water, losing but not yet lost. “No. It was... it was better this way. Better that I saw it for myself.”

He reached out with one hand, suddenly, closing his fist in the air. As if he could catch the flat, golden disc of the setting sun of the palm of his hand; steal it away and call it his own.

“I'd imagined... this must sound pathetic, but I'd imagined I'd look something like the sun. A sun of my own making, warm and white. Incandescent.”

John smiled. His smile was small, just barely hanging on; a hopeless, funerary smile.

“Do you know what I called myself, before you called me _Hunger_?”

“Not really,” Merle said. He folded his hands together, looking out across the sea. 

“Deliverance, Merle,” John's smile faltered, then fell. "I called myself Deliverance."

The blue sky was, slowly but surely, turning the color of molten gold. There was a bird flying against the sun, its wings beating tirelessly against the dying of the light.

“You don't need to think about that anymore,” Merle said, as smoothly as he knew. "It's okay, John."

“I don't think I'll ever be able to _stop_ thinking about it,” John said. His voice was as dry as dust, dry as the desert. It was ancient; it was abandoned, dilapidated, ruined, lost to time as so many churches are. “For as long as I exist, any _shadow_ of me exists. I don't know how.”

“It's easy,” Merle said, shuffling against the sand. There was something familiar in this, the sensation of each grain shifting against his shoes. “Just focus on something else.” Merle gestured ahead, to the light rippling across the water. “Like this. Isn't this nice?”

“It's nice,” John said softly. He was looking at Merle. He might have been handsome, once; now, he was a wreck. A shadow suspended on air. There was wonder in his eyes, as if Merle was more than an old, beat-up dwarf, like he was something akin to a miracle. Then, voice dropping to the register of a murmur, “It fades so quickly.”

The waves beat against the shore, crested with white foam. Once, the tide flowed in so deep as to soak their ankles with a cool, wet spray. The sensation seemed to mesmerize John. He watched the water retreat with wide eyes. He looked like he was remembering something important, something he couldn't believe he'd forgotten.

“I've struggled against time my entire life,” he said, “against its vast, unerring flow. This, I think, would be the first time I've ever prayed for more.”

“It'll be enough,” Merle said. He reached up, meaning to pat John on the arm, but he fell short, and instead found his hand. John startled. But he didn't pull away.

“It'll have to be,” he said.

The sun was slipping down into the sea.

"Can I ask you one thing?" Merle asked. "Between old friends, before-- well, before you have to go."

"Anything," John said.

A seagull cries. The water rose, crashed against the shore, and fell away.

"This... beach. The sunset. Is this for you, or for me?"

John laughed. The first real laugh Merle had heard from him in a long, long time. Maybe Merle had gotten what he wanted after all. Maybe he'd made John whole again, if only for a moment.

"I don't know," John said, finally, voice carrying over the wind. "I just wanted to see you." Then, after a long stretch of silence, "Thank you, Merle. For this."

"Any time," Merle said, and he meant it.

He squeezed John's hand, focusing on the feel of it; warm and gentle, weathered by time, but real, still real, _there's still time, still time, even a minute can be enough._ John squeezed back, slow and uncertain, a man remembering touch.

The sun fell down into the darkness.

Merle did not let go.

 

**Author's Note:**

> @fuckhowardlink on twitter
> 
> small brain: shipping taakitz  
> big brain: shipping blupjeans  
> ascendant brain: shipping a dirty old cleric and the avatar of world-eating existential despair

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] for all things unlasting](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12907053) by [QueenOfTheNerdlords](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfTheNerdlords/pseuds/QueenOfTheNerdlords)




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